Monday, June 03, 2013

Currently: The Non-Fiction Takeover

Eating: // Just finished an Egg White Delight from McD's. The least of the evils.

Feeling: // Sad today. Found out late last night that a family member passed away. I'd visited on Saturday, so this made it seem all the more sudden, though we knew it was on the horizon.

Reading: // Trying to finish Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Nelson. The content is fascinating, but the writing is quite repetitive, so I find myself skimming at times. Hoping to finish up today and start some of the other new non-fiction books on my stacks.

Blogging: // The ArmchairBEA fun last week really got my blogging mojo crankin', so I'm looking forward to doing more in the coming weeks! Summer is here, and I'm not teaching any online classes, so that frees up my time significantly. I'm also totally in love with this new, vast BookTubing community that I discovered thanks to Brooke, so I see more video blogs in my future to supplement my writing here!

Non-fiction was one of our daily genre discussion topics for ArmchairBEA, and it seems that non-fiction is taking over my TBR all of a sudden. Between book club picks and books I'm generally excited about, non-fiction is taking the cake! All kinds of new acquisitions.

On my immediate TBR:

Naked, by David Sedaris, is the next pick for my in-person book club. We needed something light after several dark, moody books, so I suggested this one. I've read all of Sedaris's other books except for his newest, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. Very excited to be getting to this one.

The Astronaut Wives Club, by Lily Koppel, came to me via an author pitch. I don't accept a lot of books from publishers or authors, but this one sounded too good to pass up. I read the first few pages on Friday night, and I had to make myself stop reading in order to go back and finish Confessions of a Sociopath. That bodes well!

The Whole Fromage, by Kathe Lison, sounds wonderfully quirky. It's all about French cheese!!! It's been a while since I read any food writing, so I'm really excited about this little gem.

The Telling Room, by Michael Paterniti, is another cheese-related non-fiction. To any newbies reading this blog, I swear, I'm usually not this cheese-centric. It's just a happy accident. This is the book I know the least about, but a buddy passed along her ARC. Here's a short blurb:

In the picturesque village of Guzmán, Spain, in a cave dug into a hillside on the edge of town, an ancient door leads to a cramped limestone chamber known as “the telling room.” Containing nothing but a wooden table and two benches, this is where villagers have gathered for centuries to share their stories and secrets—usually accompanied by copious amounts of wine. It was here, in the summer of 2000, that Michael Paterniti found himself listening to a larger-than-life Spanish cheesemaker named Ambrosio Molinos de las Heras as he spun an odd and compelling tale about a piece of cheese. An unusual piece of cheese. Made from an old family recipe, Ambrosio’s cheese was reputed to be among the finest in the world, and was said to hold mystical qualities. Eating it, some claimed, conjured long-lost memories. But then, Ambrosio said, things had gone horribly wrong. . . .

Paris: A Love Story, by Kati Marton, is a book I started reading at random before the last Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon. I was totally taken with it but I had some more reading obligations at the time, so I'm excited to get back to this emotional story.

What are you reading this week? Is your TBR teetering toward any particular genre?